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The First Digital Computer (Not ENIAC!)

26-Aug-2004 By Jim

Link: www.codesandciphers.org…
Link: www.codesandciphers.org…

Despite what the history books say, the ENIAC was not the first digital computer in the world; the COLOSSUS was, but since it was developed secretly during World War II, the British (those that knew about it) have had to suck it up whenever we Yanks touted our (false) superiority. Until the 1970s, when details of the machine’s existence were made public. Of course, none of the textbooks used to teach American students has been changed to reflect reality, at least when I was going to school.

Unfortunately, all the hard-copy schematics of the machine were destroyed in 1960, except for a few drawings, kept illegally by engineers, which were divulged during the rebuild project in the 1990s. The rebuild was started based on eight! photographs of the machine and a handful of grey-matter recollections. In 1995, the NSA in the US was forced by a Freedom of Information Act request to declassify 5,000 documents pertaining to the Colossus. Several of these documents were helpful in rebuilding the machine; one in particular, written by Albert Small, thoroughly described how Colossus worked and enabled a significant amount of progress in replicating many of the mechanisms of the machine. Colossus is estimated to be about 90% rebuilt now and there’s work begun to rebuild the Colossus Mk II and the Tunny machine.

If you’ve read Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon and enjoyed it, you have to read about this. I’m personally fascinated with the early days of cryptanalysis and how it helped to birth the digital computer age. It’s absolutely amazing what was engineered and built before the advent of the transistor (which is to say, before I was born). I’m sure some will be loathe to read it, but this is one example of something non-violent that Hitler caused to happen, by his clever use of large-scale machine-based encryption, which undoubtedly precipitated the computerized world we now live in — or maybe that’s just my naïveté showing.

World War II Codes and Ciphers info:
Link: www.codesandciphers.org…

Filed Under: blogosphere, Technology

From me to Mary (and Tammy, and …)

17-Aug-2004 By Jim

Scare quotes, oh my!
Link: www.suck.com…

Scare quotes are the quotation marks found around phrases like “gangsta rap,” “shame spiral,” or “security zone”: coinages that may be lingo, that may be jargon, that may even be slang but are more likely excuses where a little distance is in order. The subject of the story may say it’s “the truth,” but we say it’s spinach and — ya know what? — to hell with it. Scare quotes throw a net around the ideas and assertions media culture hasn’t absorbed yet, stuff journalism’s jobholders may even be a little afraid of.

National Punctuation Day is Aug 22
Link: www.prweb.com…

Today on Plastic
(me: and you can download the adobe or microsoft e-book from amazon for US$12.25!)
Link: book on amazon.com…
Link: www.plastic.com…

You know who you are. You’re reading the SubQ and you have to take deep breaths because some submitter doesn’t know the difference between “its” and “it’s.” Or you shudder as someone thinks the plural of banana is “banana’s.” Or you find yourself unintentionally bemused by someone’s misuse of “scare quotes.”

The good news is that you are not alone, if sales of the surprise best-seller Eats, Shoots and Leaves: A Zero-Tolerance Approach To Punctuation by Lynne Truss is any indication. The unlikely smash has topped best-seller lists in the U.S. and Britain, and is among Amazon’s top worldwide sellers.

How did this happen? How did an fussy editor airing her pet peeves about punctuation become an international sensation? Truss herself isn’t sure, and views the whole thing as a “complete fluke.” She hardly expected its success, but takes comfort in knowing there are other sticklers out there. “I wrote Eats, Shoots & Leaves because I’d become very animated about illiteracy,” Truss explained. “I had no idea so many people shared my concern. It’s very heartening. Because I’m not myself a parent, I underestimated the extent to which ordinary, decent folk are worried about the kind of education their children are receiving.”

The book is probably not for everyone, as people who aren’t writers, editors or at least mildly word-obsessed may find it a bore. Others may be taken aback by her obsession, which included a regrettable episode of shredding a childhood pen pal for a perceived lack of literacy. She admits that sticklers like her can be “an annoying bunch of people.” But the book has received a boost from the expected friendly journalists, as well as those gearing up to salute National Punctuation Day on Aug. 22. If nothing else, it yields such bits of trivia as learning that 15th-century printer Aldus Manutius the Elder invented both the italic typeface and the semicolon. And she tries to make the process fun, offering up a punctuation game on her Web site, as well as the guilty pleasure of a punctuation hall of shame (where you can even submit your own photos chronicling abuse of the English language).

For all her humor, Truss sees slumping writing standards as a serious problem. She winces at discovering during televised quizzes “that most British people truly do not know their apostrophe from their elbow” and since learning that the United States “is not immune to similar levels of public illiteracy.” She notes the unfortunate timing of it all, as ignorance of the written word comes while written communication has become “the ascendant medium” because of the Internet, which “happens to be the most immediate, universal and democratic written medium that has ever existed.”

Filed Under: blogosphere, Flamebait, General

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